The presidential contest is often compared to a horse race, with the candidates fighting to finish in first place on Election Day.

We offer a bit of a different metaphor here. The campaign is also a series of simultaneously fought tug-of-war matches for different demographic groups — based on gender, age, and race/ethnicity, among others.

Our
Washington Post-ABC News polling provides a glimpse into which demographic groups Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are attracting and how that support has changed over time.

Certain groups have wavered in their support since we started polling between the candidates, but others have been more stable.

Clinton has a narrow lead among likely voters.

Clinton has a four-point edge over Trump among likely voters, a small shift from a two-point lead in September.

How the candidates’ support has changed since June

Clinton received a larger post-convention bump than Trump, but that’s eroded a bit since then. In July, she had a six-point edge over Trump among likely voters, and in August, after the convention, she had an eight-point lead. That’s now at four points.

While many groups remained safely in either Clinton’s or Trump’s voting blocs, some groups are torn. That includes independent registered voters, who leaned toward Trump in July and August then toward Clinton in early September, and today Clinton leads by seven points with the group. Independents backed Trump in late September and now Clinton again leads the group by seven points.

The biggest changes since June among registered voters were all in Trump’s favor. White women without college degrees, suburban voters, conservatives, and white Catholics are among the groups that have moved toward Trump by at least 15 points since June.

BIGGEST SHIFTS TOWARD TRUMP

+50

0

+50

Oct. 13

24

White women without

college degrees

June

19

Suburban

17

Conservatives

16

White Catholics

15

40-64 year olds

15

Some college

15

White non-evangelical

Protestants

+50

0

+50

+75

+50

+25

0

+25

+50

+75

June

Oct. 13

24

+7

+31

White women without college degrees

BIGGEST GAINS

FOR TRUMP

19

+16

+3

Suburban

17

+31

+48

Conservatives

16

+0

+16

White Catholics

15

+10

+5

40-64 year olds

15

+0

+15

Attended some college

15

+2

+17

White non-evangelical Protestants

+75

+50

+25

0

+25

+50

+75

Some more takeaways:

Party support solidified

Democrats and Republicans have aligned behind their candidates. Democratic voters support Clinton by a 76-point margin; Democrats who are likely voters support her by an 81-point margin. Republican voters support Trump by a 74-point margin; likely Republican voters support Trump by 77 points. These numbers closely mirror the results from the late-September poll.

A consistently large gender gap

Clinton’s lead among female voters shrunk slightly to a nine-point lead, while men have fluctuated from a 42 percent tie between the candidates in June to a 16-point edge for Trump in late September and now virtually a tie again, 43 percent to 42 percent, with Trump by one point. Among likely voters, Clinton has an eight-point lead among women and is tied with Trump among likely voter men.

A sharp racial divide between Clinton and Trump

Clinton has a solid lead with black and Hispanic voters. She holds a 79-point lead among African American voters in combined September and October polls. That is similar to earlier polling, but smaller than Obama’s 86-point margin among this group in 2012. Clinton holds a 28-point lead among Hispanic voters in combined polls – a group Obama won by 44 points in 2012.

No Republican in the past nine presidential cycles has lost among whites with college degrees.

Romney won the group by 14 points in 2012. Trump, however, has never held a significant lead with this group and is down by a 12-point margin among white college-educated voters, according to the October Post-ABC poll (and a 13-point margin among likely voters). That’s bad news for Trump when viewed alongside his performance among minorities.

By race*

Sources: Washington Post-ABC News poll, Oct. 10-13, 2016, the sample size for subgroups of registered voters ranges from 106 to 664 depending on the group and poll; the margin of sampling error for a candidate's support among groups ranges from plus or minus 4.5 points to 11 points. Share of vote from Current Population Survey 2012-2014 Voting and Registration supplement. Candidate illustrations by Ben Kirchner for The Washington Post.

* Figures for black and Hispanic voters based on two-poll rolling averages. First published Sept. 16, 2016.